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Friday, August 9, 2013

Review: Deathrun by erikwesley96

Since Deathrun 2 is coming out soon I figured I'd take a look at erikwesley96's ROBLOX adaptation of the Source mod by the same name, Deathrun. Deathrun is a new take on the "obstacle course" sort of games, this time involving 1-2 players as "Killers" controlling the traps, and the rest of the players as "Runners" who attempt to get to the end of the course without being killed by the many traps in each map.

Gameplay
The game will put you into a cylinder-like multicolored lobby that's pretty much barren bar for a door that says "VIP" in the main area, and a ball pit along with some stairs leading above the main area to the side. But what's really important is a few of the GUIs, there's one showing the Killer/Runner wins, your points, a shop, and news, although the news and shop GUIs are either broken or they just rarely work, but enough about the lobby.

When a round actually starts, a random map will be picked, the killers and runners will be assigned, and it's up to the Killers to take out every last Runner with the traps, and the Runner's job to make it to the end of the map by outsmarting the Killers before time runs out. Yes, you have a time limit of about 2 minutes and 30 seconds depending on how short the map is.

Deathrun features about 6 maps in total,

Death Mountain isn't exactly the hardest nor the easiest map in the game, it mainly features double paths of platforms which of one will randomly disappear from a selected path, the common lava spinners, lava spheres which will rain down in sections, and the easy to con out spinning bridge, and also some lava "walls". It's one of the easier maps, but not the easiest.

Cookhouse is another easy map, featuring only one really lethal trap which is a bunch of lava spheres raining downhill onto you. But besides that all there is are some double pathed platforms that will vanish, lava spinners, a disappearing bridge at the beginning which always seems to get people, and a spinning path.

Castle Defense with it's 5 star difficulty may seem intimidating, but it's really not since the main thing that will give you trouble is the beginning's walls that can push you off, and the 4 lava spinners that will spin in a random order. After that, all you have to deal with then is a spinning bridge, 2 lava spinners, some disappearing platforms, and spinning bars, 4 of them, and after that you're free to win the map.

Pyramid of Doomis probably what I would call the easiest map, it features some easily predictable falling planks, thanks to gaps in the floor, a few pillars that will jut out and push you off, a small section of lava spheres that you'll most likely watch plummet to the ground, and then some more pillars, and platforms. It's an interesting idea, just
not enough creativity behind it.

Crazy Train is also a bit underwhelming, even if it boasts a 4 star difficulty, all that is offered here mainly is some lava walls that pop out of the train cars.(NOTE: If you are wearing hats do not try to jump over the lava spinners or you will die due to a ROBLOX bug involving kill bricks and collision detection, just walk between them and you won't have a problem) The only new thing the map really brings to the table is some pipes/beams that fall out of a flatbed car, other than that you have the generic spinning bridges, and a disappearing beam that you can easily fake out.

Lava Mine is probably the hardest, and most chaotic map in my opinion, it starts out simple with a disappearing path, and some platforms, then lava spinners, lava geysers that rise onto a beam that will kill you, then the absolute coolest trap, a ton of lava spheres rain down onto a platform, ricocheting all over the map and possibly killing every remaining runner, it's pretty cool.

Building
Deathrun's lobby is quite bland, nothing too advanced there. Though what really shines is the look of some of the maps, especially Lava Mine, and Castle Defense, some of the cframing in a few of the others is good too.

Creativity
Unfortunately, Deathrun isn't exactly the most creative game, almost all of the maps use the same traps, (lava spinners, disappearing platforms, spinning bridges, etc). It kind of begins to get stale after a while, there's just not enough done with the concepts of most of the maps.

Overall
Deathrun I think is a good time waster, although it's not perfect by no stretch of the imagination. The gameplay is fun the first few times around, but as I said the design and repetition of the same traps begins to stale the experience after a while, not to mention the shop and news GUIs being broken, but that's most likely due to ROBLOX updates, so I can't exactly blame erikwesley96 for not trying.
But, would I say it's worthy of the "Deathrun" name? Yes, while it may not be as fun as the actual source mod, it's a good time and I have no doubt most of these problems will be addressed in Deathrun 2 which is coming "very soon" apparently. But you can check out what seems to be the Alpha for it here. I also very much recommend you check out the actual Source mod for Deathrun, mostly found through either Team Fortress 2, Garry's Mod, or Counter-Strike since it's a heck of a lot of fun. As always, have a good weekend and see you next week!